My policy has always been this: when a company starts fucking with minutia like free coffee, it's time to head for the exits. Because either A. they really can't afford it, which means they're likely not much longer for this world, or B. they're bullshitting their employees which shows total disrespect and disregard for the people on whose backs the company is built.
It can show a problematic pressure on management to demonstrate how they are cutting costs every month and saving the company money even the smallest amounts.
My dad worked for a big mill and even though he was mostly a laborer he through a few coincidences he worked as a part time foreman. They would do these monthly meetings where all the management and foreman would get together and discuss what they did to save costs and improve. He said these guys would get up and being telling the dumbest things about how they would do things like get a cheaper toilet paper for the bathrooms or how they took out the free coffee and got rid of the coffee pot. This is a multi multi million dollar company. Men standing around telling how they saved the company like $100 a year. Stupid.
The funny thing was in the story my dad told me when they got to him many of the management looked down on him as he was just a "laborer" so he felt that they were wanting to see him fail and even one of the higher up managers said Oh it's okay you are not a full time foreman you don't have to tell us what you did, but my dad said well actually I do have something to report.
He then told them how he started making the workers who worked on the log booms take a log book of all the sticks and something else I forget the name which came from another company. This company was over charging huge huge since no one kept track so they would just send over a bill for whatever they thought they could get away with. My dad said I have accurate logs of what exactly we used and saved the company, I think it was like $100k so far, and will should be saving xxx amount over the year. There was more to the story about how he saved them an additional $80k with another crazy move but I enjoyed hearing my dad the laborer and how he outshone all these higher up managers and how they got rid of free coffee while he did actual changes that really saved.
If you work on the circuit/systems design side of things at Intel, it’s plausible that you can find work outside. If you works in the fabs in places like Oregon or New Mexico, it’s unlikely that you will be able to find work without having to move. There are other fabs in Oregon but they are much smaller and tend to have very high standards for hiring.
Yeah I agree. Coffee in the western world is in plentiful supply and easy to get hold
Of for a lot of people. The news item reads as if they giving out golden toilet paper. It’s disrespectful and so out of touch and meaningless offer for employment. It’s embarrassing as a “perk” at best and it’s meaningless in the grand scheme of things if you work in a toxic environment and it will cost pennies even to a failing company such as this but they market it as a great wonderful thing. It’s not. Come on get real where anywhere on the earth has having free coffee been a deal breaker for any job offer/negotiation. What people want. Work on interesting problems. This is a fantastic opportunity to do this and was touted back in the day at Intel. A decent salery and freedom of autonomy. Work from home. It’s not fucking difficult but hey. Free coffee right?
I thought this was a headline from The Onion.
Perhaps maliciously compliant, why not just go down the street on the company dime (probably salary exempt) to go get your overpriced but likely better coffee. Effectively it’s still free cause this is just a dumb cut.